''Leptopsammia pruvoti'', the sunset cup coral, is a solitary

stony coral Scleractinia, also called stony corals or hard corals, are marine animals in the phylum Cnidaria that build themselves a hard skeleton. The individual animals are known as polyps and have a cylindrical body crowned by an oral disc in which a mo ...

in the

family Family (from ) is a Social group, group of people related either by consanguinity (by recognized birth) or Affinity (law), affinity (by marriage or other relationship). It forms the basis for social order. Ideally, families offer predictabili ...

Dendrophylliidae Dendrophylliidae is a family of stony corals. Most (but not all) members are azooxanthellate and thus have to capture food with their tentacles instead of relying on photosynthesis to produce their food. The World Register of Marine Species incl ...

. It is an azooxanthellate species, meaning its tissues do not contain the

symbiotic Symbiosis (Ancient Greek : living with, companionship < : together; and ''bíōsis'': living) is any type of a close and long-term biolo ...

unicellular algae (

zooxanthellae Zooxanthellae (; zooxanthella) is a colloquial term for single-celled photosynthetic organisms that are able to live in symbiosis with diverse marine invertebrates including corals, jellyfish, demosponges, and nudibranchs. Most known zooxanthell ...

) of the genus ''

Symbiodinium ''Symbiodinium'' is a genus of dinoflagellates that encompasses the largest and most prevalent group of endosymbiotic dinoflagellates known and have photosymbiotic relationships with many species. These unicellular microalgae commonly reside in ...

'', as do most corals. It is native to the

Mediterranean Sea The Mediterranean Sea ( ) is a sea connected to the Atlantic Ocean, surrounded by the Mediterranean basin and almost completely enclosed by land: on the east by the Levant in West Asia, on the north by Anatolia in West Asia and Southern Eur ...

. The species was described by

Henri de Lacaze-Duthiers Félix Joseph Henri de Lacaze-Duthiers (15 May 1821 – 21 July 1901) was a French biologist, anatomist and zoologist born in Montpezat in the department of Lot-et-Garonne. He was a leading authority in the field of malacology. He studied medic ...

in 1897 and named to honor the French marine biologist Georges Pruvot.

Description

''Leptopsammia pruvoti'' is a solitary stony coral and superficially resembles a

sea anemone Sea anemones ( ) are a group of predation, predatory marine invertebrates constituting the order (biology), order Actiniaria. Because of their colourful appearance, they are named after the ''Anemone'', a terrestrial flowering plant. Sea anemone ...

. The polyp sits in a calcareous cup, wider at the base than the top, which varies in shape from cylindrical and short to conical and long. It grows to a height of about and a diameter of . The polyp is yellow or orange with about ninety-six long, translucent yellow

tentacle In zoology, a tentacle is a flexible, mobile, and elongated organ present in some species of animals, most of them invertebrates. In animal anatomy, tentacles usually occur in one or more pairs. Anatomically, the tentacles of animals work main ...

s. It can retract back into the skeletal cup, so that the tentacles become barely visible. This species can be confused with another yellow or orange cup coral, '' Balanophyllia regia'', but that species never grows so large and has fewer tentacles.

Distribution and habitat

''Leptopsammia pruvoti'' is found in the western Mediterranean Sea and the

Adriatic The Adriatic Sea () is a body of water separating the Italian Peninsula from the Balkans, Balkan Peninsula. The Adriatic is the northernmost arm of the Mediterranean Sea, extending from the Strait of Otranto (where it connects to the Ionian Se ...

and on the Atlantic coasts of Portugal, Brittany, the Channel Islands and southwestern England. Independent of sunlight, it is found under boulders, on bedrock, in crevices, under overhangs and in caves at depths between . In a sea cave in Italy it was noticed that the colonial coral '' Astroides calycularis'' was plentiful in well-lit locations but became less numerous in the darker parts of the cave while ''L. pruvoti'' became more abundant in dark positions. However, in locations where sulphur-laden spring water mixed with the sea water, this situation was reversed and ''Astroides calycularis'' was more common. The relative proportions of the two species may have been affected by the existence of mats of sulphur-digesting bacteria around the spring.

Ecology

A barnacle, '' Megatrema anglicum'', is often found living parasitically inside ''Leptopsammia pruvoti''. The breeding strategy of ''L. pruvoti'' involves high fecundity, a short incubation time for the embryos, small

planula A planula is the free-swimming, flattened, ciliated, bilaterally symmetric larval form of various cnidarian species and also in some species of Ctenophores, which are not related to cnidarians at all. Some groups of Nemerteans also produce larva ...

larva A larva (; : larvae ) is a distinct juvenile form many animals undergo before metamorphosis into their next life stage. Animals with indirect development such as insects, some arachnids, amphibians, or cnidarians typically have a larval phase ...

e and rapid maturation. The

generation time In population biology and demography Demography () is the statistical study of human populations: their size, composition (e.g., ethnic group, age), and how they change through the interplay of fertility (births), mortality (deaths), and mi ...

is about 2.3 years and maximum longevity 13 years.

References

External links

* {{Taxonbar, from=Q3830761 Dendrophylliidae Corals described in 1897 Biota of the Mediterranean Sea